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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Grandaddy Hudson

Hey friends! SO sorry that I have been scarce lately. I have been giving a lot of time and energy to my new business venture (post on that coming soon) and trying to spend as much time as possible with my sweet Grandaddy.

He has been fighting the battle with lung cancer since October, and 3ish weeks ago, we were given the news that it had spread to his liver. Those next weeks were filled with a lot of love and round the clock care for him, and then Friday morning he went home to be with Jesus and with my grandmother, who he lost when my mom was eleven. Here is a photo of us with him on our wedding day, almost exactly 2 years ago (the 22nd was our Anniversary).

We all knew where he was going when he passed, but it had still been so hard to let him go. His final night here on the earth, my sister and sister-in-law sat by his bed singing him his favorite hymns. Also, for Christmas 2010, I made him a jar of memories that I collected from all of the members of our family. I wrote them each on a piece of paper and put them in a ball jar so that he could pull out one at a time and read them. He loved that jar. My mom and her sister (and other family members that were there) pulled those out and read each one to him, one by one. They said that he smiled as they shared precious memories with him.

He had a beautiful life. He fell in love with my grandmother and had 6 children with her. He served our country both in the Navy and the Air Force. He lost my grandmother to cancer when his children were very young, and met Jeanette, the grandmother that I have known in my life (in the photo above). He had so many grandchildren that I lost count of us. And he lived for the Lord, the most important legacy that we can leave.

I remember when I was little, he used to bring us fresh vegetables and I would help him clean and prepare them. He loved to garden. I also remember his smile and his laugh and how he always made me so happy. I remember the silly way that he used to ring the doorbell 4 million times when he came. It was only him that did that. There are so many things that I remember that I will not write here, or else this post would go on forever. But the best memory that I have, the one that I will hold on to forever, was from last Sunday. It was before he had progressed too far that he was not coherent. I had been to his house visiting with him and was leaving to go to the grocery store. I leaned over to kiss him, he kissed me and then looked in my eyes and said "I love you. SO much." It was the last coherent sentence that I ever heard from him, and I will treasure it in my heart always.My uncle Darryl was supposed to be baptized on May 20th. My grandfather passed away on May 18th. It was very important for him to know that his children would all meet him in heaven someday and he really wanted to be there. So as a family, we decided to baptize my uncle at his funeral, as a way to honor him. It was such a beautiful thing. Now I ask that you would pray for peace and comfort for my family. Especially my mom and her siblings. Now that the hustle and bustle of the funeral has passed, they have to face taking care of all of his earthly matters, which as any of you that have lost someone know, is very hard to do while you are grieving. I leave you with this beautiful quote from a story that my sweet, sweet Grandaddy wrote:

"A better life is not necessarily how much money you have, or how big
the house is where you live, how fancy your car is, or even your
friends, but how you present yourself to others, how compassionate you
are, and how thankful you are."-Harold A. Hudson